Disturbed

[jt139]

Hey everyone,

I've had a really bizarre day and I feel like I don't have anyone I can share this with, so I thought I should reach out here to get some insight and advice. My boyfriend and I have been dating for nearly eight months. For the most part, things have been going well. Today, though, something happened that made me extremely uncomfortable and I do not know how to respond.

My boyfriend was with me in my car and we decided to go to my house and have sex. Two minutes before we got there, he tells me, "Oh my gosh, babe, I had a really bad sex dream last night." We sometimes joke about having sex together with unattractive straight men who we know, so I laughed and said "Oh, was it with ______ ?" He said no, and then he told me that in the dream he was having sex with his little brother, who is only seven or eight years old.

I was stunned. I think I slapped him and said "What the hell! That is disgusting. Why would you even say that?" He told me that he didn't know why he had that dream (he described it as a nightmare) and that he would never do anything like that, that he loves his brother, etc. He said he just needed to share this with somebody. Anyway, I kind of freaked out. I stopped talking to him and I ended up just taking him home. He got really emotional, he kept apologizing, and he was upset that I didn't give him a kiss goodbye.

I don't know what to do or what to think. I don't know if I am overreacting or if I should be trying to support him in some way or WHAT, I do not know. I am just so repulsed by the very notion of what he told me. And I am scared, too, because my boyfriend was a victim of rape from his older brother as a child. I'm realizing that his younger brother is approaching the age that my boyfriend was when he was first raped. I feel like that could be part of why he had that thought in the first place. And I'm afraid too because I don't understand if he is saying that he is attracted to children in some way or if this was just some kind of twisted horrible dream.

Can you guys tell me what I should be doing? I've got a lot of mixed feelings right now, but I can't seem to find any discernment or clarity through it.

[Jay]

Hi JT,

My two cents.

Yes, it was disturbing but he has never done something like this before, right? And he loves his brother very much. He also has apologized to you countless of times.

I think you should give him a second chance. He needs your most support right now particularly because he was sexually abused himself. You don't want to traumatize and mess up his emotional.

You are his boyfriend and you have the power to help him to change, shape and support his life.

[dfiant]

Dreams often not what they seem, I never take dreams at face value.

Chances are that he associates love and sex as the same thing, he loves his brother therefore has a sex dream involving him, doesn't necessarily mean he want's to have sex with his brother, just means he really loves his brother and in the dream the act of sex is his expression of love.

[mdna]

Its difficult because there are studies that show that in some extreme cases the abused can end up becoming the abusers. So from that prospective I can see your cause for concern. However, that really is the worst case scenario and not typical of most people that have suffered with abuse.

I agree with Jay that your boyfriend needs your support and understanding. Give him the benefit of the doubt for now and help him through this difficult time. Presumably, he is probably extremely traumatised by his dream and probably feels even worse now. I sometime have weird dreams and granted they have never been as horrific as that. However, dreams don't tend to dictate everyday life.

[TheArbiter]

First things first, nobody can tell you you are overreacting. Your reaction is valid. No way should anyone tell you how to think How to act towards your boyfriend however...
I think this is a case where your feeling about it has to differ from your reaction. He was opening up to you, on a very difficult subject (you say he had to share it), and you assigned blame for something out of his control, pushed him away, and judged him. If I were your boyfriend, I'd feel like a horrible person for having that dream.

At any rate, that much has already been summed up. So where do you go from here?

Well; ultimately we can't tell you where to go. We can advise you, but it has to be YOUR intuition on the matter that settles it. Imagine; that you remain uncomfortable (not necessarily with or because of him, just purely) but you carry things on without change. How then will you feel? Compromised? Imagine however that you give yourself some time and space away from any outside influence, and really try to remember what your first intuitive reaction was (in full, not just what presented outwardly), and then go with that. It's very very hard to listen to your intuition because at times it feels wrong against the weight of real life or empirical evidence to the contrary. But it's your relationship; not ours

[Pix]

I do all kinds of things in my dreams that I'd never even consider in real life. And I think at least half the time having sex in a dream is purely symbolic of something else. While I might tell him to be sure that such a thing never happens outside his dreams, I wouldn't be bothered by his having dreamed it at all.

[LateBloomer]

First of all, we dream in metaphors, so it's a MISTAKE to interpret a dream on a "literal" basis.

Example: I dream of killing my father.

That doesn't mean I want to LITERALLY "kill my father".

It's a metaphor for the desire of ending a relationship with someone in a superior position (like a boss maybe).

So, just because your BF dreams of having sex with his little brother doesn't mean he literally wants sex with his brother.

All that said, your BF has been victimized in real life and apparently this dream is a way his mind is processing that experience. I wonder if he's been to counseling about his experience and if he has, maybe it's time to go back to work on a few things.

Good luck with this.

I would stick by him with support but if you find out he has a conscious desire to abuse children then it becomes a personal decision of whether or not you have the desire to steer him towards help.

[Person66]

I would be disturbed too his dream is disturbing. But Dfiant knows these things better and said dreams are often not what they seem and not to take it at face value, LateBloomer reinforced this when he said we dream in metaphors and that it's a mistake to interpret them literally. What they say is backed up by what psychiatrists say about dream interpretation as established by Freud and honed by future experts. I remember learning this in my psych classes, sex in particular can mean lots of non-erotic things.
Interpretation can be tricky, for example lots of people dream that their teeth are falling out, you would think it has to do with fear of dentists or something like that. But it's really fear of aging, as teeth falling out represents stages in life, first we lose our baby teeth, then when we're elderly we may permanantly lose our teeth and need dentures.
I wouldn't put much stock in what your BF dreams, rather what's more important what his relationship with his younger brother is really like. If its normal you have nothing to worry about. It's healthy that he's being open and honest about what he dreams with you.
Besides I have killed many people in my dreams (including loved ones) and have yet to murder anyone.

Take care.

[Rainbowmum]

Hi jt139,
First let me say welcome to GS.

As disturbing as the thought of this is , at the end of the day it is still only a dream.
My advice , talk it out.
A one off dream does not a pedophile make.

Here for you.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

I have had this reoccurring dream for years that I am driving down some Nevada wasteland in a really hot red car. I see a woman hitchhiking and I pull over. She leans in through the passenger side window, huge tits - I mean gigantic. She has brilliant red hair and dark brown eyes (a dye job if any exists) and she says 'I can be anything you want'.

Suddenly I have a gun in my hand, I lift it up to her face and pull the trigger saying 'How 'bout dead?!?!?!?'

Its a dream - I have never killed a red headed woman, I have never driven a hot red sports car (nor would I, I'm into trucks). I did live in Nevada for 6 years, never picked up any hitchhikers or shoot any in the desert.

Our brains like to play tricks with us, our dreams are the place we can be insane. Heck even the most unlikely things seem real in a dream, like flying without a plane or something - we just up and fly and while in the dream it make perfect sense.

As Dfiant said, dreams are not literal (a few can be, such as PTSD 'reruns' of past experiences'). They can be symbolic too.

In this case he had a disturbing dream, a nightmare. It doesn't mean he has a taste for children.

The fact that he shared it with you tells me that he is disturbed by it and was looking for support/counsel.

Reporting him for a dream is silly. If you are going to report him for child molestation, report me for murder to.